


Sleep and Waking

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Míriel only wants to be able to sleep. Her young son is afraid to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I can’t sleep, Fin. I’m so tired. Why can’t I sleep?”

That was how it had started. It had been not long after the birth of their child. Míriel had just given him a name; Fëanáro. It was an odd choice, thought Finwë. He supposed that it was prophetic, as mother names so often were. But if Míriel had foreseen any of their son’s life then she did not share it, and he did not ask her to.

They had been happy, for a while. Their child was healthy and strong, and he had a safe, peaceful kingdom to grow up in.

But something was wrong. The first signs were subtle. Embroidery had been Míriel’s great gift, and to the Noldor the crafts that they were gifted with the skill of were more than simply a pastime or a living. They were a way of life. But now she would simply lay aside her needles and thread for days at a time. Soon it became weeks.

Then it began. Some nights, she could not sleep. She would walk through the hallways of the palace, or sit by Fëanáro’s cradle and rock her sleeping son for hours at a time. When he grew too old for a cradle, she would simply watch over him through the night. And sometimes she would just sit in a chair, perfectly still, unblinking. The nights when she could sleep became rarer and rarer, and very soon they stopped altogether.

He tried to stay awake with her, at first. He hated to see her suffer alone, sleepless, through the long hours of the nights. But soon it began to take its toll on him. He needed to sleep, she told him gently. He was king; he needed rest so that he could make good decisions for their people. He should feel happy that at least he had that option, she said, even if she did not.

She spent the days in a pale haze. Her eyes were blank, her voice flat where once it had been clear and musical. Her days and nights ran together, a dull expanse of empty sleeplessness. It was as if the light had been drawn from her eyes, which grew more red-rimmed by the day. Her skin, already pale, became blotchy and almost grey-white. Even when the light of the Trees fell on her eyes, they did not reflect it with the same bright glitter as they once had. They now seemed to suck in light, two deep pits of emptiness.

She spoke less and less. But when she did, he often heard her mutter under her breath, repeating the words like a prayer. “ _I can’t sleep. I can never sleep._ ”

As she faded, Fëanáro grew stronger. Sometimes, although he would never admit it to anyone, there were moments when he hated his son. But no, he loved his son. He would love him and keep him safe until the end of the world. And yet, when he saw in Fëanáro’s eyes the same brightness that was gone from Míriel’s, he felt a stab of something dark, a side of himself best kept hidden. He tried hard to look after his son, to lavish him with attention, to give him everything to make up for his mother’s fading presence. And yet he could not completely deny that he did these things in part to assuage his guilt.

Some days he was angry at her. Why must she do this to him? Why could she not just go back to the way she was? A cruel voice in the back of his mind whispered these things to him, and he hated himself.

One night she suddenly went back to her needlework. He awoke to find her crying silently in the corner. She made no sound, but the tears flowed down her pale cheeks from her empty, empty eyes. Her abandoned stitches were crooked, and her fingers raw and bleeding. Before, she had never made a single stitch that wasn’t perfect as long as he had known her. But that had been before. Wordlessly, he took her in his arms, and held her, taking comfort from the feeling of her hair on his cheek, and the reassuring physicality of her. Sometimes he felt like he would go to sleep and when he awoke, she would simply have melted away. For a long time, he sat like that, whispering words of comfort into her ear, barely knowing what he was saying, willing to say anything if it would help her to come back. All she could say was “ _I can’t sleep_.” She repeated it over and over until the horrible reality of it threatened to drown them both.

He offered to ask the palace healers for a draught that would help her to sleep. She agreed, although he thought she didn’t look as if she held much hope of it working. Then again, it was hard to tell what she was thinking at all these days. Having opinions seemed to be part of her old life, a vanished luxury from another world. Nevertheless, he had the sleeping draught prepared, and could not help but hope himself, just a little… the results were worse than he could have imagined. He ordered the draught brought to her in the bedroom. While the effects lasted, she sat, silent and motionless, in a chair. Her eyes were blank, glazed; she did not blink or even react at all when a hand was passed over her eyes. It was Fëanáro that found her like that. The child tugged desperately at his mother’s skirt, clasped her hands.

“Ammë! Ammë! Wake up!”

The sound of his son’s crying drew Finwë to the room. As soon as he saw Fëanáro in tears, he knew with a heavy, dark foreboding that something had gone badly wrong.

The effect of the sleeping draught wore off, in time. But he knew, now, somehow, that he could not help her, not that way at least.

Some days she still spoke. Their conversations were disjointed, difficult, full of long pauses and repetition. Finwë wanted so badly to simply ask her what he could do to help her, to bring her back, and for her to tell him. One day she seemed a little more lucid, and he resolved to try.

“Míriel.”

“I can’t sleep, Fin.”

“I… I know, my dearest one. Do you know why?”

“No, Fin. Do you know why?”

“No. I don’t know that, yet. But I want to help you.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment. “I know that, Fin.”

“Do you know a way that I can help you?”

She gave him a long look, as if trying to decide how to reply.

“I think… I think I need to go.”

“Go? Go where?” He thought he knew, but he did not like it.

“The Gardens.”

“Do you mean the gardens of Lórien? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“And do you think… do you think there you will be able to sleep?”

“Maybe. That’s all I want. I just want to sleep.”  
He held her in his arms again, wishing that he could give her some of his strength. She felt so terribly frail, almost intangible. “I know, Míriel, I know. Very well. We will go tomorrow, if that is what you want.”

“Finwë?”

“Yes?”

“We should bring Fëanáro. I want him there with me when… when…”

Finwë felt a wave of nausea at the implication. “I’m not sure if that is a good idea,” he began, “he is still a very young child after all, and there is no need… and anyway, hopefully you will be back before he even knows you have gone. Won’t you?”

She gave him another long, searching look. “Yes. Yes of course.”

He felt some measure of relief. “Good.”

“But please, can Fëanáro come anyway? Our son…” she trailed off, tears in her eyes again. He could not deny her this. Not now.

They made the journey in silence. When they reached their destination, Estë was waiting for them. She gently took Míriel’s hand, and led her away. Finwë felt uneasy as he let her go. But, he reminded himself, it was for her own good. She wanted this. It would help. There was no ceremony, she simply lay down upon the grass, and fell instantly into a deep sleep. Finwë was surprised, and yet not surprised. It was strange to see her sleep again, after so long. But she had known for some time, he supposed, that this was the solution.

He resolved to wait for her there, with their son, until she awoke. Then, he thought, they could all go home, and everything would go back to the way it had been before. He sat on the grass beside her, whispering her names, her hand in his. Fëanáro, wrapped in his father’s too-large cloak, sat beside him. They would wait there, he decided then, for however long it took.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Fëanáro, time to go to sleep!”

He came to dread the words. His mother had gone to sleep. They said that she was going to wake up, but she never did.  And they told him that there was so much of her in him… he wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but perhaps, he thought, it meant that the same thing could happen to him?

He remembered her sleeping face, his father’s figure hunched over at her side. They said that the sleep was healing, but it had only broken their little family. It was the first time he realised that adults always lied, that they even could lie.

The fear became crippling, ever-present. He pretended to go to bed when they said, but he would do anything to avoid falling asleep. The fear of the blackness, the loss of awareness, was too strong. More often than not his father was not in the house, and his mother was gone. She had fallen asleep and never awoken. He would not make the same mistake.

He did anything to stave off sleep a little longer, to drive the fear away. He made up stories inside his head. He counted as high as he could. He bit his lip. When he got a little older he read books, practiced writing his name over and over - by the light of Telperion because he couldn’t risk a candle - until his eyes hurt and his mind was spinning with tiredness. He knew his father would be angry, if he found out. He had wanted so much for her to be able to sleep. Fëanáro did not understand. Had his father known, he wondered, that if she went to sleep she would not wake? Surely not. But he had always thought his father knew everything…

But always tiredness overcame him in the end, and he fell into an uneasy sleep full of indistinct nightmares. He would wake, panicking and covered in sweat, legs tangled in the sheets, stifling his cries so that his father would not hear.

Sometimes his father did hear, and would come to his room, and sigh, and hold him in his strong arms. He would stroke his hair and tell him he was safe, that he could sleep in peace. Fëanáro wanted so much to believe it. But he never knew whether he could believe anything his father said anymore.

He grew older, and the fear faded, the nightmares crept back into the shadows, mostly. He knew the reasons, now, for what had happened. He knew he was not his mother. And yet… always there was some part of him, still the frightened child, that said  _no, don’t go to sleep._  He knew it was silly, weak. But it was a habit he found hard to break. It made him want to spend long hours in his workshop or his study, until Telperion was waning and the new day had come.

He had always disliked the darkness. Darkness was too much like unconsciousness, a loss of control. His mother had slipped into the blind darkness, and she had been lost. No one had been able to prevent it, not him, not his father, not the Valar.

What she had needed, he sometimes thought, what he needed, what they all needed, was a better  _light_. 


End file.
